New center will carry on exiting Ind. senator's legacy

School names academy that will launch a Washington internship program after Sen. Richard Lugar

When Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., leaves the Senate at the end of the year, he will teach at the University of Indianapolis and help the school launch a new Washington internship and study program. (Maureen Groppe, Gannett Washington Bureau)(Photo: Maureen Groppe, Gannett Washington Bureau)

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Lugar leaves the Senate at the end of the year

Senator known for his work in the Senate on foreign affairsNew academy will have office in Washington to support internship program

When longtime Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar leaves the Senate at the end of the year, he will teach at the University of Indianapolis and help the school launch a new Washington internship and study program.

Lugar and UIndy President Robert Manuel are scheduled to announce Friday the formation of the Richard G. Lugar Academy, an expansion of the school's existing Lugar Center for Tomorrow's Leaders, to run the new program.

Lugar, 80, gained national and international prominence for his work in the Senate on foreign affairs. He is the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and served as the committee's chairman.

He is best known for the program he created with former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia through which thousands of nuclear warheads and ton of chemical weapons in the former Soviet Union have been destroyed.

Lugar was defeated in the GOP primary in his bid for a seventh term. He has served in the Senate longer than any Indiana lawmaker and is the most senior Republican in the Senate.

Hundreds of Indiana students have interned in Lugar's mayoral or Senate offices through the years and thousands of high school juniors have gone through the daylong Lugar Symposium hosted at UIndy for 36 years.

"Working with future leaders, young people, interns, has always been a very big part of Sen. Lugar's career," said Lugar spokesman Andy Fisher. "It goes back to his own experience with mentors in the Navy, in high school and college."

The new Lugar Academy will continue to run the high school program that allows students to explore national and international issues. It will include a branch office and a full-time aide in Washington to support the new internship program as well as conferences, symposia, policy studies and other activities. Students in the semester-long Washington program will spend two days a week in classes and seminars and three days in a government internship.

The Indianapolis office will develop an institute to prepare first-time elected officials for public office, drawing on the resources of the UIndy's Institute for Civic Leadership & Mayoral Archives.

In addition to continuing as the keynote speaker for the high school symposium, Lugar will deliver three lectures a year for UIndy students as well as speak in Washington.

"I have always found UIndy students especially interested in preparing for leadership roles in campus and civic activities and potential political and public service opportunities," Lugar said.

Lugar is also talking with Indiana University and Georgetown University about work he could do with them after the Senate. He will be signing with a speakers bureau, Keppler Associates, and working with the German Marshall Fund on a project to improve foreign governments' understanding of and relationship with the United States government.